


The War Was in Color

by CitrusVanille



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Color Blindness, Colors, F/M, Implied Steve Rogers/Tony Stark - Freeform, M/M, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 11:29:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16218101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CitrusVanille/pseuds/CitrusVanille
Summary: Growing up, Steve Rogers was color blind. The serum changed that.





	The War Was in Color

**Author's Note:**

> Here's to amoergosum, for being the most amazing beta! You are a delight. Okthankyou!

Steve doesn’t really have a chance to notice, at first. When he first comes out of Mr. Stark’s machine, he feels like he’d sink right down to the floor if he weren’t being held up. He’s so drained he can barely see straight, let alone realize what he’s seeing. Then the explosion, and he’s running on pure adrenaline. And then it’s over, and he’s standing in the middle of the street, in a body he doesn’t know, and it’s not just the new muscles under his skin that have him mesmerized, but the skin itself, and the veins running underneath, and he doesn’t know what to call any of it, but that’s _color_.

He can’t stop staring at everything. The streets, the buildings, the sky. The _people_. It’s incredible. You can’t miss what you never had, they say, and maybe for some things they’d be right – whoever they are – but it’s not like Steve never knew he was missing _something_. He’s an _artist_. He _knew_. His teachers had been understanding, mostly, and he’d stuck to pencils and charcoal, found he had an eye for shading and detail, especially with faces. But he’d heard the talk, how it was such a shame his talent would go to waste, when no one would hire an artist who only worked in black and white.

Now, though. Now he can _see_.

The SSR does a battery of tests as soon as they can get him back in. Steve sits through them all quietly, answering when spoken to directly, but mostly just taking everything in. It’s a good distraction, since the tests themselves are mostly pretty boring, and a few are uncomfortably invasive. Eventually, Peggy interrupts, insisting everyone take a break for lunch.

It takes some convincing, but Peggy is nothing if not determined, and less than a quarter of an hour later, she and Steve are ensconced at a corner table outside a little café not far from headquarters.

They make small talk while they wait for their food, neither quite willing to discuss anything important out in the open. Once their food arrives, they’re quiet, focused mostly on eating, though Steve can’t help but continue to try to look at everything. He’s worried it might look like he’s developed a tick.

Peggy must think so, too, because she puts down her cup a little more firmly than necessary, and reaches out to wave a hand in front of his face. “Steve? Are you all right?”

There are so many answers to that, and, really, none of them are a simple ‘yes’, but Steve figures she might be able to help him with at least what’s currently making him so fidgety. Only a little awkwardly, he touches a finger to the sleeve of her jacket. “What is this?”

She blinks at him. “My jacket?”

“No,” the back of his neck is heating up, but if he can’t ask her, he’s not sure he can ask anyone. “The color. What is it?”

Peggy blinks a little more, looks down at herself as if to check. “Olive, I’d say. I believe they call it ‘olive drab’ – which is rather appropriate.”

“Olive is green and brown together?” Steve’s pretty sure he remembers being told that, at some point, but he wants to make sure.

“Yes,” it’s not quite a question, but Peggy is frowning at him now. “Do you –” and then her eyes widen. “You were colorblind.”

It was most definitely a statement, but Steve nods anyway. “Dr. Erskine said that was likely to be one of the things the serum could fix, but I never really thought…” he trails off, lets his eyes wander for a moment before focusing back on Peggy. “I never could have imagined,” he says, eventually.

As if she’s trying to see what he’s seeing, Peggy’s gaze sweeps the café, the street, all the people around them. “Oh,” she says, very softly, and then looks at Steve again. “Are you,” she starts, stops, tries again, “Do you know,” and again, she stops, looks a little embarrassed.

“I’m not completely lost,” Steve tells her, figures that’s what she’s trying to ask. “Grass is green and sky is blue, right?” He gives her a wry smile, which she returns with one that looks a little relieved. “I went to art school,” he continues. “I know what all the colors are, and even, in theory, how to mix them. But I’ve never been able to match them to what I was seeing, before.”

“I see,” Peggy replies, and the way she says it makes Steve feel like maybe she does. She looks around again, more slowly this time. “Would you like to go for a walk?” she asks after several long moments.

“A walk?”

“Yes,” Peggy smiles again. “I know you’re not really supposed to wander off, but I thought maybe you’d like to see a bit more before they trap you in another exam room. You can ask me any colors you like.” There’s a bit of mischief in her smile now, and Steve wonders if it would taste as bright and brilliant as it looks, though he’s pretty sure he’d never dare.

They walk slowly, in no particular direction. Steve’s head swivels first one way, then the other. He tries not to point too obviously, but he takes Peggy at her word.

“What color is this?” he asks, gesturing at a hat in a shop window. “How about that?” at another. “What are those colors?” at a large poster.

Blues and browns and reds and greens in shade after shade. Peggy doesn’t know the proper names for a lot of them, but it doesn’t even matter, Steve’s just amazed at all the variation. One woman they pass is in a pretty yellow dress, holding a bouquet of yellow flowers, and Steve has trouble believing they’re the same color.

They end up in what serves as a park, a scant handful of trees at the end of a mostly residential street. It’s surprisingly quiet, the shouts and clatter of the busier streets oddly muted here, the delighted shrieks of the children a street over who’d knocked the top off a hydrant blending in with the sounds of birds.

“What about these?” Steve asks, waves at the flowers valiantly clinging to the dirt around the trees, between the bits of grass and the cracked sidewalk.

Peggy smiles, and points at each in turn. “Yellow, white, purple, and that’s somewhere between blue and purple. The color at the center is another yellow.”

Steve plucks one of the blue-purple flowers with yellow and offers it to her. “Thank you,” he says, and he means for more than just naming the colors for him.

Peggy laughs, light and easy like he hasn’t heard before. “My pleasure,” she tells him, takes the flower, and tucks the stem into the lapel of her jacket.

Slowly, in case she wants to back away, Steve steps closer. “What about this?’ he asks, tugs gently on one of her curls, though he knows the answer by now, and knows that she knows it, too.

“Brown,” Peggy says, still with a bit of a laugh in her tone.

“And these?” he asks, dropping his hand to lay a finger gingerly along her cheekbone, just below one eye.

“Brown,” Peggy says again, and the laughter is gone now. She watches him carefully, doesn’t move.

Very lightly, Steve touches his finger to the center of Peggy’s bottom lip. “And this?’ he asks, voice gone a little rough in his throat.

“Red,” Peggy tells him, soft, breath warm against Steve’s fingertip, eyes fixed firmly on his.

Even more slowly this time, Steve starts to lean in. There’s a moment where he thinks Peggy starts to lean towards him, as well.

Then the thudding of racing feet, and a shout, and they both jerk apart.

There’s a kid in uniform – a messenger, Steve thinks – running towards them. He’s panting as he skids to a halt in from of them, clearly having been looking for them for a while, gabbling something about Colonel Phillips wanting to know where they’d vanished to, and don’t they know they’re not supposed to go wandering off?

Steve glances sidelong at Peggy, who gives him what looks like a rueful glance in return, and then they’re both following the boy, and Steve tries not to stare around them too much, or to make too much of the fact that Peggy is keeping pace with him, so close their wrists brush on every other step.

+

A war, an unintentional seventy-year nap, and everything and nothing has changed.

For a moment, just a moment, when Steve sees the files, he wishes he couldn’t see color anymore, wishes he’d lost that along with everything else. Deceased. Deceased. Deceased. Red, unforgiving block letters across the unassuming faded black and white of the pages. It’s as if the harsh slash of color makes everything more real. Final.

Red like Peggy’s lipstick.

Black words, smaller. He almost doesn’t believe them. Retired.

A splash of color in an olive drab world.

It’s not what Steve would have imagined. He never pictured Peggy retiring. He’d never really thought that far ahead, hadn’t been able to envision a life after the war. Hadn’t dared. And the idea that this vibrant woman he knew – with those bright red lips he’d kissed just days ago before jumping out of Schmidt’s car – that she might be old enough to retire, it’s almost incomprehensible. But she’s alive, and that. That’s a lifeline, and he clings to it, holds on and breathes.

They get called in, this team created by SHIELD – and that’s another thing to wrap his head around, that the SSR still exists after all this time, that Peggy helped found this newest iteration, that they’re still messing with things they should probably leave well enough alone. They’re a team of misfits, that much is clear, but so were the Commandos, and Steve thinks that might be another thing to hold on to, another lifeline, something good that hasn’t changed. He thinks that until they’re all in a room together. There’s no common bond here, not like during the war. They’re called in because SHIELD has no other choice, and if that isn’t the SSR all over again, he doesn’t know what is. Steve can’t find it in him to find that comforting.

Steve gets a new costume. Bright blue and clean white and vivid red.

“A spangly outfit,” Stark calls it. He’s not wrong.

Banner calls them a time-bomb. He’s not wrong, either. They go off, and it’s one disaster after another.

And there’s red here, too, splashed bright and tacky on a pile of old trading cards. Vintage, Natasha told him. “He’s very proud,” she’d added. Fury had tossed them on the table, thrown them like they had more weight than they should, like they’d make noise when they landed. Steve almost thought they would. “Guess he never did get you to sign them for him.”

Somehow, they pull it together. A common bond of grief, regret, guilt, anger. Stark – Tony – cottons on faster that Steve. For a moment, it’s like having Bucky or Peggy back again, dark-haired and vivacious and convinced Steve’s an idiot, but happy he’s there anyway.

“You were brainwashed?” Steve asks in the jet. It’s not the most awkward thing he’s ever said.

Agent Barton – Clint, Natasha calls him – doesn’t even look back at him. “Mind control,” he says. “I’m good now. Nat knocked him out.”

Steve blinks. “How?”

“Cognitive recalibration,” Natasha answers.

“She hit me really hard in the head,” Clint replies at the same time.

Steve nods, though neither of them is watching him. “And that did the trick?”

Clint shrugs. “Hell of a headache, but seems to have.”

There isn’t time for more. Tony’s on the speakers on the jet, in their ears on their communication devices, and there’s an army coming out of a jagged tear in the air over Stark Tower. Blue and black and white shimmering out of nowhere.

Orange flames send up clouds of heavy grey smoke. Yellow taxis are everywhere, empty and abandoned, overturned in the streets. The Chitauri are silver and gunmetal grey and full of dark blood, shooting flashes of blue-white light. It feels more like Europe than he thinks it should, the Chitauri as hellbent on destruction as the Hydra soldiers he’d fought then. Too many citizens, though. Running and screaming, trapped in buildings, and facing a threat they’re not prepared for. And red, through everything.

Red and red and red. The red of Natasha’s hair and the red of Thor’s cape and the red of the Iron Man suit embracing a nuclear warhead, and Steve knows that one-way trip, knows the decision that is no decision. He thinks of red block letters and shear mountain sides covered in snow and ocean water so cold and bleak it’s grey. For a moment, just a moment, he wonders if there’s color on the other side of that hole, darkness ripped into the pale blue of the sky. He wonders what Tony will see, if he’ll see anything. Or if it will be as fast as crashing a plane, just a blur of light and sound and then nothing.

Like their strings have been cut, the Chitauri fall.

For a long minute, the portal stays empty.

Steve breathes. “Close it.” And feels something in his chest constrict. Like a fist clenching.

Red, again, tumbling end over end.

“Son of a gun,” Steve thinks, maybe says out loud. The fist inside his ribcage loosens, then tightens again. Tony’s not slowing down. Thor might say it, but Steve doesn’t hear it, can’t tear his eyes away.

The green blur that’s the Hulk slams bodily into the plummeting figure, knocking it off course, catching it, bracing it as they crash to the street.

Tony rests motionless, propped at an awkward angle by the bulk of the armor, the light that usually shines a clear blue in his chest missing.

Then a roar, and a jerk, and the light’s back, Tony’s eyes flying open, brown like Peggy’s, and Steve feels like his own strings have been cut, sits back hard on his heels.

Tony’s saying something, joking, talking about – something, Steve doesn’t know. And all Steve can do is sit there and breathe, feel the half-smile curving his own mouth. They’re alive, they made it, and that’s something else he can hold onto.

+

There’s a blast, an explosion, pure yellow pulsing outwards, rolling over everything in its path. Brighter than the sun, and a different quality entirely, and Steve knows it’s the soul stone shattering, knows Wanda did it. It’s heartbreak, and relief, and a heavy sense of failure all rolled into one blinding color.

It might be seconds or hours later, and Steve still can’t move, is still trying to convince his lungs to pull in desperately needed breath, but something – _something_ – sucks the yellow light back in from all around. A deep inhalation. A reversal of an explosion. A movie spaceship going to warp speed. Something that existed in a place one moment just getting sucked out of existence, like it never was. And Steve knows, he _knows_ , that something has gone wrong.

Almost on the tail of the yellow, there’s a flash of white, static and lightning, and Steve’s brain thinks, _Thor_.

Shouting, that’s Thor’s voice now, and Steve tries to force himself up, needs to make himself move. The smell of burning metal unlike anything from the battle still raging, a blaze of blue and black like twisted flame, like the first portal that dumped an army on their heads from outer space, and Steve staggers to his feet, puts one in front of the other.

Thor, streaked with blood and sweat and dust, cape red and lank, stands in the clearing, alone. He looks shell-shocked, staring at nothing, and Steve sees the axe he’d shown up wielding, flat on the ground, blade grey-black, haft brown wood against the brown detritus of the forest floor.

“Where’d he go?” Steve doesn’t know how he knows, but he does, knows Thanos is gone, knows in the very core of his being, right down to the tips of his toes, that this sense of _wrongness_ has Thanos behind it, and his brain simply refuses to process beyond that.

“Steve?” Bucky’s voice makes Steve jerk around.

Right before his eyes, like in his worst nightmares, Bucky vanishes. Disintegrates into ash, nothing left but the gun he’d held.

Steve doesn’t remember moving, doesn’t remember dropping to the ground. He’s been alive almost a hundred years, been awake and aware for over thirty. Lived two lifetimes, three lives, and in a moment, the blink of an eye, everything is grey again. Grey and dark. Color and light shattering and drifting away like so much smoke in the air.

It’s forever and no time at all, and when the colors seep back in, when Steve blinks and finds he can still see, they’re muted, unlike anything he’s ever seen, even in the dead of winter, trapped under fire in the forest in Germany. The flashes of gunfire, the red of blood on the snow, none of that exists here. Dull greens and browns where there used to be brilliant emeralds and bronzes gleaming in the sun. Dust and ash and a terrifying silence broken only when a thin keen starts up, almost animal, as the universe starts to grieve.

They find Vision’s body, what’s left of it. A greyed out husk that seems to fit this new emptiness that can’t be explained. They look for the others. It’s slow. Everyone moves in fits and starts. They can only account for so many, those that were seen before they crumbled to dust and blew away. Those that were killed outright – slain by an enemy that vanished just as cleanly, leaving behind only the wreckage of their ships and their own corpses – their bodies must be taken care of. There are fires burning that need to be put out, damage everywhere. And everything is a grey haze.

The once-bright colors of Wakanda’s warriors seem faded. Red-orange and blue and purple. It’s as if they’ve been left in the sun for weeks at a time. Or covered in dust. Steve wonders vaguely if all the colors are just going to wink out, gone again as swiftly as they came all those years ago. The grey-scale of his childhood and early adulthood seems more suited to this new world he can’t wake from, like overcast skies and the threat of rain.

Natasha, Bruce, Rhodes, every one of them looks drawn and tired, still in shock. Thor somehow looks worse, hollow, like the spark in him that had nothing to do with lightning was snuffed out. The raccoon – Thor calls him Rabbit – sticks close, ears and tail drooping. There’s no sign of Sam.

Okoye, when they find her, shakes her head, eyes horrified and lost. If Steve didn’t already feel the way she looks, he’d be terrified, he thinks. She’s always cool and collected when he sees her, would give Natasha a run for her money with how unflappable she is.

M’Baku has taken charge in the field, though he looks as haunted as anyone else. There are wounded in need of attention. Borders to secure. They’ll have to find news of the outside world, but first they need to handle the aftermath of the battle. Most of their people were evacuated, no one knows if they’re safe, or how many of them there are.

Steve and the others do what they can. By unspoken accord, they stay together, never straying out of sight. Steve can’t help but think they must all be a little terrified that more of them will disappear.

Hours, or maybe days, go by. Steve doesn’t sleep. He’s not sure anyone does. Everyone moves like shadows.

Through it all, against the steady background of _ohgodohgodohgod_ , Steve keeps thinking that this is what he was afraid of, and never knew it. Ever since he woke up, the crippling feeling of loss, the knowledge that everything – every _one_ – he knew was changed or gone or both, and he’d tried. He’d drifted for a while, but he’d made a new home for himself, once, twice, and again, and again. Every single time he thought he had his footing, the rug he hadn’t even known he was standing on was summarily yanked out from under him. But every single time, there was something to fall back to. There were new things – new people, places, ideas – to care about. And, in one fell swoop, everything’s gone again. It’s like coming out of the ice all over.

It’s almost easier not to think, to let the dullness in his vision spread to cover his thoughts. He can’t think about how they failed. How they lost. What they lost. If it’s true, it’s too massive a concept for him to process, not now, maybe not ever. What good is all the strength they shot into him now? Vision’s gone. T’Challa. Wanda. Sam. He’s lost Bucky again, couldn’t save him, watched him slip away and could do nothing, like he was clinging to the side of a train in the mountains, letting him fall. He tore apart his team, his family, and he couldn’t even save what was left of them.

_Together_ , he’d said. Win or lose. But there’s no together now.

_Tony_. Gone before Steve even knew they had something to face. And Tony was right all along. Something bigger out there. Something worse. And Steve had left Tony to face it alone. He went two years trying to out-stubborn Tony Stark, and look where it got him, two years of silence, and now Tony’s gone. The phone had rung – two years – and for a moment, just a moment, Steve thought this was it, their chance to talk, to apologize, to fix it. And it hadn’t been Tony on the other end. Tony had done what he always did when it came down to it, made the sacrifice play, and this time. This time.

Steve can’t think about it. There’s work to do. They all just need to keep moving.

Rhodes is in his armor, helping Thor and a group of others move bodies and debris from the battlefield. Bruce and Natasha are working with the wounded. Steve can’t help but look up every so often to make sure they’re still there.

Voices in the field are as muted as the colors, barely a low hum, and then. There’s a whine coming from somewhere. Not a human noise. At first, Steve can’t place it. Then he’s sure he’s imagining it. He checks again, spots Rhodes hauling an alien body towards the pyre built near the barrier. He’s on the ground, as he had been moments before, not flying, no repulsors firing.

The sound is getting louder, and Steve is sure it can’t be. But he looks up anyway, and his heart catches in his throat at the sight of a crimson streak heading straight for him.

When Tony lands, crashing into the earth, dirt spraying, Steve doesn’t even think, just goes running for him, hits full force, the impact hard enough to rock Tony back on his heels, even in the suit. And Tony goes tense – Steve can feel it even through the metal, and how is that even possible? – but of course he does, the last time they saw each other, Steve almost killed him, and now he’s hugging him like his life depends on it. And maybe it does. Steve’s lost so much, all over again, and so has Tony, and what if Tony doesn’t know? Where has he been? What happened? He’s a wreck, Steve can see it now, from close quarters, the armor looks shredded in ways Steve has never associated with it before, even after the worst battles they’ve fought. The helmet retracts, melts away, and Steve gets a full look at Tony’s face, and knows that, wherever he’s been, whatever he’s been through, Tony has felt every inch of what they’ve lost, and then some.

“We’re going to fix this,” Tony says, eyes honey-brown and deadly serious. Steve doesn’t know how, but Tony’s conviction is enough for Steve to feel it, too, in his chest, beating against his ribcage like his heart, deep in his gut, heavy like a fist, but fizzing like the best champagne. “I don’t know what we have to do,” Tony continues, holds Steve’s gaze like a promise, and Steve can see the colors around him clearly, red and gold and clear blue, bright like the sun’s come out. “but we’re going to do it. We’re going to fix this. Together.”


End file.
